


Creatures of habit

by Trojie



Series: Stories that aren't about cats [8]
Category: RocknRolla (2008)
Genre: Boss/Employee Relationship, Friends With Benefits, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:30:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny thinks Bob needs a change of scenery, and is more than happy to provide it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creatures of habit

**Author's Note:**

> A Cats-verse interlude from Bob's POV - takes place during [The one that had nine lives](http://archiveofourown.org/works/333655). Includes a cameo that implies that this whole verse is a low-level crossover with Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Beta-read by Immoral Crow, who puts up with random flailing emails going I ACCIDENTALLY BOB/JOHNNY FIC, HALP! with great good grace and humour.

Bob follows Archy's orders, back into his uncle's bar, resisting the urge to wipe his hands on the back pockets of his jeans. He doesn't want to look like he's been caught out. He squares his shoulders and holds his head up. He's not ashamed.

He's known this conversation was coming for a while now. He's relieved when Johnny just asks, 'You wanna work for me, Bob?', and puts it to him straight. 

Bob shrugs. 'How much choice have I got, John?'

'All the choice in the world,' Johnny smiles. 'You can tell me to fuck off, right enough. But you never know, you might want this job. Wouldn't it be nice to get a bit of fresh air?'

He doesn't look around the pub, but he might as well. It's not the Speeler, but it's a family business - the message is the same. Fresh air. A change of scenery. Bob's run with the Wild Bunch since he was a young bugger; they took him in, kind of thing. He owes them. But he'd have done everyone a sight better service if he'd just kept his dick in his trousers, yeah?

He'd have done so much better to keep his heart under control, too, but some things you don't seem to be able to choose, no matter how much you'd like to.

Fresh air. What that means is, time away from the boys, from One Two. Bob wonders what Johnny knows, or has seen, or has been told by Archy, who saw it. And the hardest thing is that Bob knows Johnny's right, and he could use some of that fresh air, to get his head straight, and Bob's not quite the kind of man to ignore something he knows. 'Suppose,' he says, and shrugs again, easily and lazily. 'What're the details?'

Johnny's let his hair and his beard grow since he got out of rehab - he looks like something out of a novel. If Bob were still on the prowl, he'd go there. He's thought that for a while, but first Johnny was a junkie, and Bob doesn't go _there_ , and then Johnny was the new Lenny, a potential threat to the Wild Bunch, and besides, Bob had One Two, sort of. 'Easy as pie, my friend,' says Johnny. 'Two nights a week I could use a driver, someone who knows the area and with a few extra skills. That's all - nothing untoward. And there's a decent remuneration package. Maybe even a nice Christmas bonus, who knows?' 

He leans forward. 'Let's help each other out, yeah?'

Yeah. Bob can see the logic. Bob … he needs to make this decision. 'Done,' says Bob, and reaches out a hand for Johnny to shake - clean, manicured nails he has now, Bob notes, long pianist's fingers. Firm grip. ''Scuse me,' Bob says, and goes to the bar.

'A week's notice, then,' says JD, his uncle, frowning at him while steadily pouring a Guinness. 'And don't you get in any more trouble, young man. Your poor mother's heart won't take it.'

Bob's poor mother's heart is made of teak, and Bob and JD both know that very well, but Bob nods anyway. 'Promise,' he says. 'Cheers, by the way. For the job and everything.'

'You're family,' says JD. 'But you need to stop fucking around with your life, boy. Just pick something and do it. You're not stupid. Do something you can be proud of.'

Bob thinks back to what he left, the scene in the alleyway, the things he wants, and fuck if JD hasn't hit the nail on the fucking head, even if that's not what he means, even if Bob has an inkling JD's talking about his own tearaway son rather than his sister's. 

So, before he can change his mind or talk himself out of it or think too hard about it, Bob walks out of the bar and round the corner back into the alleyway and breaks up with One Two, if that's even the word for what you do when you decide you're done fucking around in secret with the man you want to have for the rest of your life. 

Done.

***

It takes one week, which includes two evenings driving Johnny to 'meetings' with men who look like serious business to Bob, who's very happy to be one of the little fish in the pond, and three evenings at the Speeler with both Johnny and One Two in attendance, before Johnny asks, from the back seat of his Jag on the way home.

'So Bob,' he says casually, flicking the last bit of ash off his fag-end out the window and rolling it back up. 'You still seeing old One Two? He treating you right?' It sounds like the thing a friend would say, but Bob's wary.

'Just friends,' says Bob shortly, indicating right down the street that leads to the street Johnny lives on, where Bob can pick up his own car and get home. 

Johnny gives him a look in the rear-view mirror. 'Are you telling me fibs?' he asks mildly, for Johnny. 'Or is that just what the kids are calling it these days?'

Bob sighs, lets the leather of the steering wheel hiss through his fingers as they turn and straighten out, bump-bump over a sleeping-policeman. But nothing says he has to answer that, so he just keeps driving, and Johnny, for once in his bloody life, lets it go. 

But when they pull up, Johnny leans over the seat and over Bob's shoulder and says, 'You wanna come in for a drink?'

And Bob, who is an idiot, says 'Yeah, cheers.'

***

Johnny's place is nice, big, would be clean if it weren't for the clutter everywhere. Bob moves a jacket and a shaker egg and a sheaf of guitar tab and sits on the couch while Johnny goes to get them something to drink. 

He feels weird, being here. It's a weeknight, and he should be in the Speeler with the boys, and instead he's at Johnny's place, on his own. Like he's switched allegiances, and he would never do that. He couldn't. But he feels guilty all the same. 

It makes him pull out his phone and dial One Two before he's really thought it through. It rings and rings, though, and One Two doesn't pick up. When it goes through to voicemail, Bob doesn't know what to say, not really, he just knows he wants to say something. In the end he tries, starts 'One Two. Fuck, just -' and doesn't know where to go with it. He sighs. He wants to say that he didn't mean it, ditching One Two, but that he doesn't regret it, and that doesn't make any sense, and so he stutters 'Don't. I don't -'

And then there's Johnny at the other end of the room, and he twitches his hand until the ice in the tumbler he's holding clinks, and says in a loud voice, 'Come to bed, Bob.'

The voicemail message-time runs out just then, just after he's said it, not before, which would have been convenient. Bob prays savagely that the microphone didn't pick it up, and hangs up, glaring at Johnny. 

Johnny just tinkles the ice in the whiskey tumbler again, like he's beckoning a dog. Bob goes to get it, since he's obviously not going to get actually served his drink. 'What did you do that for?' he demands, drinking half the glass down. 

Shrugging, Johnny does the same with his own glass. 'Just don't want you going back on a good decision,' he says. 'He was never going to treat you right, Bob. What's worth that amount of misery? You ought to be having fun with your life.'

Bob, reckless, angry, drops back into his old Handsome Bob routine like a rock into a pond. What's he got to stop him? 'You gonna help me with that?' he asks, and Johnny grins like a shark. 

'You gonna come to bed, then?'

***

Johnny's a fighter, and Bob has to wrestle him for control, wrestle him all the way to the bedroom, and it feels good. Johnny's got height and reach, but Bob's got power and determination, and Johnny's only in it for the fall anyway. Bob gets him pinned, one arm up over his head and one under the small of his back, with all Bob's weight keeping him down, and Johnny bucks up under him, panting. 

'Have you punished me enough yet?' he asks, licking his lips.

'For what?' Bob demands, shoving Johnny down by his shoulders to keep him where Bob wants him. 

'For not being One Two? For throwing a spanner in your little apology? For giving you something you want?' Johnny reels off. 'C'mon, Bob, we're just having a bit of fun. You deserve a bit of fun.'

'You're my boss,' Bob points out, panting a bit himself now because he's got Johnny under his hands and Johnny's twisting and grinding up like by pretending to fight he'll get himself off faster. Bob wants to fuck him. And Bob's going to, going to do it so hard, the way Johnny's begging for it.

'Yeah, and you're still here.'

Johnny's pulse races under Bob's lips when he mouths there in the tender place below Johnny's jaw, and it thumps even harder when Bob bites. Trousers go by the wayside, and Johnny gets his arms free but only uses them one to hang onto the headboard and arch himself up encouragingly, the other to scrabble for lube from his bedside table and start making use of it.

Bob's in before he knows what's happening, Johnny opening himself up hard and fast, his eyes screwing up tight as he does it, and then he takes Bob in like he wants it more than anything else in that moment - to get fucked. Johnny's a man who knows what he wants and takes it. 

Johnny meets Bob every bit of the way, slamming up with his ankles almost knotted in the small of Bob's back, and Bob gives it to him hard, harder, as hard as he can. It doesn't last. It doesn't have to. And the rest of Bob's anger dissolves with it, into coming, and Johnny coming, and cleaning up the mess and resisting dozing off in Johnny's stupidly big bed. He levers himself up to find clothes instead.

'It's not that he doesn't want you, I reckon,' says Johnny out of nowhere, as if they're continuing their conversation. He's perched on the end of the bed and lit by the light from the open window, the pinprick glow of the cigarette he's smoking. 'But he won't make you happy.'

'I'm not after advice,' says Bob, shuffling around looking for his pants. 

Johnny shrugs and stretches. 'If you want something else, you only have to ask.'


End file.
